


Meteor's Discourse

by Cyanidecafe



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 18:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10037609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyanidecafe/pseuds/Cyanidecafe
Summary: If you can shed tears for your lost comrade, if you understand that it hurts, how can you so heartlessly murder innocent people?”





	

When Uvogin died, the Phantom Troupe mourned for days. His death hung above them like a dark cloud, a reminder to the rest that being a Spider, while lucrative, also meant that they were ready to face death at any moment.  The usually straightforward, jovial Enhancer had went and got himself killed and to add insult to their injury, none of them could even locate his body. That idiot just headed out one day and never came back. The ones who took it the hardest were the Leader and Nobunaga; both had shed genuine tears at the loss.

Even if the Leader had always emphasised that no member should worry excessively at the prospect of losing the Spiders’ Head, they all knew that whenever a Leg was lost it was the Leader who took to heart the most. He cared for them more than he was willing to allow them to care for him; as much as they were his underlings, they belonged to him as much as he belonged to them. They were a team, a family of sorts if you will, all hailing from the different crevices of Meteor City who had come together and became all each other could rely on and trust. There were no traitors in the Troupe.

People have asked them this since as far as they can remember, even before their Troupe days back in Meteor City, as they scavenged to live like rats, people have asked them this. It is a question they do not bother to grace with an answer though they all clearly knew. For those who had to ask this would never understand in the first place. They did not owe anybody any answers, just as nobody ever answered their questions. They were thieves and they were hated anyway.

_“If you can shed tears for your lost comrade, if you understand that it hurts, how can you so heartlessly murder innocent people?”_

To the inhabitants of Meteor City, it is those that ask this question who do not truly understand how exactly it hurts to lose a friend. Would you cry for just anyone? If someone you did not know died today, would you cry? Would you have enough tears for the whole world, for every worthless cadaver?

So many died in Meteor City every day it was a sight too common to attribute notice. Could anyone have enough tears to shed for every tragedy here? It was preposterous that these people who grew up in clean, proper cities expected tears to be shed for every death in this world; they were hypocrites, choosing to ignore the suffering of the rest only to show pity to the deaths they deem convenient choose to feel for. They had no right to question the people of Meteor City.

Meteor City may be located merely 80 kilometres from the closest major city, but it both exists and does not. Setting foot in Meteor, it is not difficult to imagine that you have entered an entirely different country, planet even.

As far as the Government was concerned, this area was an empty land, though empty is not a word you would associate with Meteor City, bursting at its seams with vermin and refuse. For miles and miles the ground is not covered by, but actually consists of all the forms and manners of trash sent to be dumped there from the major cities. That was the initial plan, the world’s garbage bin, far flung from civilisation and out of sight where people did not have to worry about how they damaged the planet. Meteor City was supposed to be something nobody worried about and everybody forgot, just like its inhabitants.

At first it was the homeless that gathered, because it was difficult living and being treated like vermin in the cities, some chose to live where they would be spared the cruel gaze of those with homes and wealth, among real vermin in Meteor. Perhaps to them it even was a more respectable way to live, but this was a story only the people of Meteor City can tell.

At first they lived off the rotten and expired food disposed by the trucks, but the refuse that gathered grew and varied and soon they were building hideouts and structures with rusted husks of what were once large machinery and vehicles. As the piles grew, so did the population.

At any moment one could die. All you had to do was fail to pay attention to the hint of a footstep or a passing shadow and you could lose whatever little you scavenged, along with your life. Meteor was not governed by laws or people; here you got to survive if you were strong - that was the only rule. It goes without saying that is the reason why so many of the Mafia’s strongest hired fighters come from such a place; fighting and killing before they could even form coherent memories. In here, life was the cheapest thing for which you paid the dearest price to keep.

Meteor wasn’t a place that housed families. Most women disguised as men to hide their lack of strength and muscle, though this was a deceptive impression; most of them at some point had bloodstained hands. Nobody openly associated with anyone else; words exchanged in hushed whispers within dark crevices and corners. The citizens of Meteor were not of the trusting or socialising variety.

Then came the mysterious babies. Like Meteor's existence, they were mistakes made by the privileged, results of scandals or mothers too young to bear the shame of having a child. Children of people who chose themselves over their own flesh and blood.

Initially the city ignored this and let them cry and die, the stench of death long swallowed by odours of the city and their remains buried with the garbage. Some who were particularly hungry helped themselves to the remains. Concepts like right and wrong do not exist in Meteor; in a world that does not bother with laws, of what relevance is morality? Those who knew forgot them and those who did not never learned.

The babies were later adopted by various individuals who did for their own various reasons, perhaps by someone who desired a child, or someone who bred and traded them as currency. After all, no charity is done without purpose. Families did not exist in the environment of Meteor but brotherhoods did. And in brotherhoods forged from bonds of blood and decaying iron, there were no traitors.

Who you learned to trust in this city were all you had, they became the only people you could rely on with your life; for bonds formed in this city were not lightly broken. They were promises you kept even if it cost your life because these people had chosen to bind themselves to you, unlike the rest of the world which had chosen to abandon you. These were the people you shed tears for when lost because they chose to steal, fights and survive beside you; unlike random people who ended up in your life by a mere circumstance or coincidence - friendship - or so the big city dwellers dubbed them.

But it is not to be said that people who come from Meteor do not have hearts; their hearts beat differently just as their minds think differently, in a way only the descendants of the Meteor could hear. It has always been like this; Meteor versus the rest of the world. Not many knew of this city in the first place and those who did spoke of it only in hushed tones and disdain. Meteors’ only contribution were the best fighters the world ever saw.

There is a saying that if you turn your back on the world, the world also turns its back to you - only that the world turned its back on Meteor first.

 _“How can you kill innocent people?”_   
  
Nobody was innocent; living in a world which grew fat while Meteor starved. Meteor’s existence was proof of the world’s sins.

The Phantom Troupe knew all this, every one of them hailing from a different crevice hidden deep in the decrepit city, every one of them having paid their own unspeakable price to have survived so long and grown so strong. None of them had ever met their parents; none of them ever had parents. What they had was each other and the trust in their bond - that they would never fight or betray each other. Their fighting and vengeance were reserved for outsiders, their skills for taking what this greedy world hoards for itself.

Who would believe their story, or understand their feelings? Their tales so dark and depraved that even if told, would be incapable of their darkest imagination - let alone belief. Their reactions were always the same - disdain, misunderstanding and judgment, hiding so quickly behind their ideals of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. The children of Meteor did not believe in right or wrong, they believed in life and death. All’s fair in love and war, and not a single day passes in Meteor City that isn’t any less than a war.

The Phantom Troupe seeks revenge. The Phantom Troupe does not seek pity or the world’s pardon.


End file.
